


Last Words

by samsamx24



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:57:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samsamx24/pseuds/samsamx24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha has stubbornly been avoiding her true feelings for Clint for awhile now. She doesn't have the courage to tell him in person, so instead she decides to leave him a string of voicemails thinking that will be easier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Words

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! So I wrote this as a story for a prompt for my advanced fiction class, and I semi based it off Clintasha. My friends told me I should post it here, but I honestly have no idea how to do this haha but if it seems like Clint and Nat are a bit different it's because I had to write it for a class so I couldn't blatantly state all their quirks without people thinking I'm weird. But basically the prompt was we had to use only voicemails to understand the situation happening. I cheated a bit and used other thoughts, but it's basically voicemails. I was only allowed to use dialogue through voicemails, so if you were wondering, that's why! I hope this works correctly.

I hesitate with my hand over the phone. A dull hammering has started in the back of my throat, eradicating all air circulation from mouth to lungs. I shake my head to try and clear my thoughts as I pull the phone from its cradle.  
  
The number comes easily. I know it as well as my own.  
  
 _One ring, two rings, three rings_. “Come on,” I mutter into the receiver, tapping my chin absentmindedly.  
  
 _Click_. “Hi!”  
  
My face pales from hearing the sound of his voice. Palms sweat. The phone slips in my slick hand. The amount of nerves battling in my stomach leaves me stunned. This is all so foreign to me. I never get nervous. It’s not part of my vocabulary.  
  
I take a breath. “Hi, it’s—”  
  
“I’m not here, obviously. Why are you calling me anyway? Whatever, you know what—”  
  
“God dammit, every fucking time!” I slam the phone down out of frustration. His greeting always tricks me. He finds it hilarious that I’ll start a conversation with him not knowing that I’m actually talking to the machine. And somehow I’ve never managed to learn to wait. Impatient as always.  
  
“He’s probably sleeping,” I say to pacify my nerves. “Of course he wouldn’t pick up.”  
  
The phone glares at me, taunting. “Oh shut up. Leaving a message is so junior high, something neither of us actually enjoyed the first time around. We’re adults now…and I’m talking to a phone.” I fall back from the counter a ways, eyes wide with disgust at myself. “I’ve really lost it.”  
  
He would laugh if he knew how distraught this whole ordeal was making me. It would give him great pleasure, that’s for sure. And that thought only angers me more. I’m the tough one, tougher than he is at least.  
  
With my toughness in mind, I puff my chest out and grab at the phone again. I told myself I would never be that person that left messages like this. I would never stoop to this level and become one of _those_ girls. But you do stupid things when your time is limited and your brain doesn’t function correctly, and in my case, my brain, and more or less my heart, is completely betraying all logical thought.  
  
The phone fits into my hand as the dial tone fills my ears again. I wait impatiently through his ridiculous voicemail message. I remember the day he made it and find myself smiling without realizing. We were between missions, taking a well-earned vacation, and by vacation I mean lounging around the office without having a need to do anything. He was growing extremely bored and actually tossed his bow aside. Somehow he decided right then and there that he needed to change his voicemail.  
  
The memory elicits a spread of warmth through me. I force my face into a complacent frown the longer it rings. I need to get a grip. It sounds long and loud in my ear.  
  
I pause for a second after it finishes. “Hi, it’s me,” I start again, knowing I really don’t need any introduction. He’d know my voice in the dark, under water, with my mouth gagged. “I-I know you’re probably sleeping. But I, uh, I needed to talk to you and you’re not—”  
  
“Tash?” His gruff voice answers the phone, heavy with sleep.  
  
My voice catches in my throat. I hear another voice in the background, a more feminine one. “Clint, who is it?”  
  
“Just the office, Jade,” his voice falls away from the phone. When he speaks again it is right in my ear. “Tash, what is it?”  
  
He whispers my name one more time before I slam the phone down, retreating from the confession that could have ruined it all.

 

I pick a time I know he’ll be gone. I don’t want the possibility of him catching me again. I know it’s childish for me to not want to say it to his face, but I can’t, not yet. I may be strong but I’m not strong enough for that. There are only some things I can say with a physical audience. This is not one of them; especially when I know I shouldn’t do it, definitely know I shouldn’t.  
  
Yet, here I am, phone in hand, fingers poised over the buttons. My hand is steady as I nestle the phone up to my ear and listen to the ring. I imagine the echoing sound it makes in his cavernous den where he keeps the phone. The nerves start once the ring clicks over into his voicemail.  
  
 ** _Beeeeeeep_**.  
  
“Hi,” I say, not even bothering to introduce myself at all this time, “you will laugh for ages once you finally listen to this, but you need to finally hear this.” I pause, chewing on the edge of my lip. The fearlessness I feel all the time somehow evades me when I need it most. “There’s uh, you know we’ve known each other a long time, longer than either of us probably like.”  
  
I giggle nervously and stop abruptly. Why the fuck am I giggling? I don’t giggle. This is a mess already and it’s barely begun.  
  
I clear my throat and start again. “I know we’ve always had this weird thing, yah know, since our work entails us trusting each other one hundred percent. You know my past. You know how hard it is for me to trust anyone, but here I am trusting you to listen to my crazy shit and not completely laugh your ass off the entire time.”  
  
The dial tone rings from the receiver, the call disconnected. For a minute, I am so confused that I’m still rattling off my list of things I wanted to say. The ringing finally breaks through my revere. I pull the phone from my ear and glare at it.  
  
“I swear that was the shortest time ever,” I grumble, redialing the number subconsciously.  
  
Words tumble out of my mouth, quicker this time, more urgent then before.  
  
“Sorry, me again. Apparently your voicemail box holds two seconds of time, which seems abnormally short even for you. I may know how to use a gun but give me a phone and I have no idea.  
  
“And now I’m completely avoiding the point of calling you. Yes, trust. That’s where I was. Even though I hate admitting it, I trust you more than I should. I know you have my back during every mission we have, just as I have yours. I remember you came onto me strong when we first met, but I didn’t give you the time of day. You were a cocky ass that prided himself on being superior in every aspect of the fight. I soon put you in your place, which I still enjoy reliving up to this day.  
  
“I guess what I’m trying to say is—”  
  
The call drops. The dial tone blares out through the phone.  
  
Angrily, I punch the redial button and wait, impatient. My foot taps along spastically as his voice fills my ear.  
  
“Stupid fucking message syste—” **_beeeep_** “Oh, I really hate your phone. I guess this is what I get for leaving you a voicemail instead of facing you myself. Laugh all you want. I know this is amusing you. Just remember I know fifty-seven ways how to kill you without you even blinking an eye.  
  
“Right, so, we’ve been through a lot together. You’ve been there for me when no one else was. You’ve been there when I didn’t deserve anyone. I always knew you’d save me even if the mission turned south. Maybe I count on you too much, and that’s essentially what’s brought me to this today. I know you love Jade and that you’re with her now. But I always thought that once we returned to the States and took a break from our missions that we’d find a way. I know there was that one time in…oh never mind. That’s like a lifetime away now.  
  
“I guess,” I sigh, taking a breath, “I don’t know what I guess. It took me forever to even figure out what this was. And now that I have…I might be too late. You’re with someone else. You’re happy. She makes you happy, something I was never capable of doing. You two deserve to be happy for the rest of forever and always, or whatever the fuck that saying is. I never go to those types of events. Too much white.  
  
“You need something stable like that in your life. You deserve that at least. After everything we’ve been through.”  
  
I feel that time is almost up on this call. I’m almost certain I’ve filled his entire inbox with incoherent messages of my rambling thoughts. Things that he never should have known but somehow needs to know them. He needs to know what I’m finally thinking after all these years of working together. He needs to know how much he actually means to me.  
  
The call disconnects as I open my mouth to finish my last thought. I tilt my head to stare up at the ceiling, willing myself to remain calm.  
  
“I’m an idiot for doing this,” I mutter, holding the phone out in front of me. “Why would someone ever think to do this? This is absolutely nuts. I’m acting like I can’t face him and tell him all these things.”  
  
 _You know you’d never get it out_ , a voice in the back of my head says. _You’re too proud to admit you made a mistake_.  
  
“And what mistake would that be?” I ask out loud without thinking. I slap my hand over my mouth. I really am losing it. They might have to remove me from work if I’m this unstable to be speaking out loud to my subconscious.  
  
 _You had your chance_ , the voice whispers to me, soft and cradling like a gentle breeze twisting off the ocean. _And you ran away from it._  
  
“Well, I’m not running away now,” I say, punching the redial. “I will say it once and for all, and then I’ll deal with whatever happens afterwards. As long as I say it I won’t regret my past decisions.” _Hopefully_.  
  
 ** _Beeeeeep_**.  
  
“This is the last time I’m calling you I swear,” I breathe quickly. “I don’t think I could take listening to the dial tone any longer as is. But you just have to know something before you… I’ll still be here for you. You’ll always be my partner. I’ll always be saving your ass more than you’re saving mine. It’s what we do. I just wish that—”  
  
“Tash?”  
  
My mouth freezes in the middle of my sentence. I take in a sharp breath, finger hovering over the end button. Everything in me screams _abort mission, abort mission, bad idea, pretend nothing ever happened_. I could very well pretend like I was in the middle of a mental lapse. Would he believe me if I told him I was sleep walking?  
  
I look to the clock over the oven: 2:45pm. Yeah, there’s no way he would buy that, even if I manage to manipulate in all the ways I know how. My manipulation rarely works on him anymore. That’s one of the downfalls for having worked with him for however long we have. He knows almost too much about me and how I function.  
  
I grit my teeth as his spoke sounds again.  
  
“Tash, come on. I know you’re there.” His voice is teasing, but there’s something else behind it. Something that I can’t pinpoint in my panicked state.  
  
“Natasha,” he says my full name like it’ll draw my attention.  
  
And it does. I hum in response too afraid to speak.  
  
“God, for someone usually so snarky it’s weird to hear you so silent,” he says with a laugh. “I can’t decide if I like it or not yet.” He takes another pause. “You know you’ve left like fifty voicemails here.”  
  
“You wish I would have left you fifty voicemails,” I bite back.  
  
“There she is.” I hear the amusement in his voice and it brings a smile to my face. His tone changes as he says, “Tash, what’s going on? You’re kind of freaking me out. You know you could have just caught me at HQ. Coulson told me you skipped out on practice today though. What’s that about?”  
  
“Not feeling quite up to it.”  
  
“That’s a lie. You are always up for a good ass kicking, especially when it’s with me. What’s going on? I half-listened to your babbling but couldn’t decipher most of it. You know how I get bored when people talk forever. Are you hopped up on espresso again?”  
  
“You know I haven’t touched that since the last incident.”  
  
He laughs but it falls from his voice as he says quietly, “Then what is it?”  
  
“You know what it is,” I whisper, not able to say it out loud now that he’s listening.  
  
“Tash,” he sighs, and he does know. Always has maybe. I wouldn’t put it passed him. He sees everything, even things that I don’t see. It’s his quirk. Like how mine is manipulating people, his is much more endearing—seeing things others don’t or can’t. “You know I asked Jade to marry me.” The way he says it, almost sadly, brings me back to reality. Hearing the word spoken stirs something in me, reminding me of the whole reason I called in the first place – his engagement to Jade, which happened a few days ago.  
  
I suddenly can’t believe I ever thought of doing this. “I know.”  
  
“If this bothered you so much you could have talked to me before I decided to buy the ring and ask her.”  
  
“It wouldn’t have mattered.”  
  
“Don’t give me that shit now.”  
  
I purse my lips. “Just forget it, Clint. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I’m cursing myself for ever thinking this was a good idea.  
  
The moment I heard Clint actually asked Jade to marry him was the first time I’ve lost control in a long while. And the whole reason I was so angry was because I heard it from fucking Banner instead of Clint himself. Of all things for me to hear from someone else, asking your girlfriend to marry him seemed like the lowest blow. I trusted him enough to tell me these things, but now I see why he might have withheld. Look at how I’ve lost it within the span of a few days. I can’t even imagine how I would have reacted if Clint told me.  
  
And the whole thing is that I shouldn’t feel like this. They had been dating for a while, it seemed like marriage was the next steps. But I honestly thought he was going to break up with her soon. He never seemed happy whenever I saw him at HQ. I feel like my whole interpretation of the situation was completely misguided. Maybe I really need to take a mental leave from work to sort out my issues, which were plentiful.  
  
I’m considering calling Coulson to tell him I’m taking a few mental days as I drop the phone from my ear. The phone hovers over the cradle and I hear him shout my name. With angry tears in my eyes, I tentatively bring the phone back to my face.  
  
“Goddammit Tash,” he says angrily. “You seriously couldn’t have said anything sooner before I went and bought the ring? We just spent two whole months in Portugal. You had so many opportunities, yet you wait until I’ve already asked her. Honestly, what is it with women? I don’t understand anything about them!”  
  
“I told you to forget it.”  
  
“I can’t forget it,” his voice wavers.  
  
I swallow back the lump in my throat. Words evade me. The tremor in his voice matches the tremor in my fingers, in my legs, in my heart.  
  
The pause between us seems to last for decades, drawing out on both ends with neither of us wanting to speak. I stare plaintively into the nothingness ahead of me. Silence has never bothered us before. We’ve always been content with one another in silence. This silence eats at every last part of my sanity until I feel like I need to throw the phone just to eradicate some pent up frustration.  
  
A rumbling sound filters through the other end and I think he’s hung up on me, which I wouldn’t blame him. My neurotic side tends to scare even the strongest of people. But then his voice is back, rough yet tender in my ear.  
  
“Come over here, now.”


End file.
